Chapter 8 - Everyday Memory & Errors

Question 1

Amygdala?

Answer 1

A subcortical structure that is involved in processing emotional aspects of experience, including memory for emotional events.

Question 2

Cognitive Hypothesis?

Answer 2

An explanation for the reminiscence bump, which states that memories are better for adolescence and early adulthood because encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability.

Question 3

Cognitive Interview?

Answer 3

A procedure used for interviewing crime scene witnesses that involves letting witnesses talk with a minimum of interruption. It also uses techniques that help witnesses recreate the situation present at the crime scene by having them place themselves back at the scene and recreate emotions they were feeling, where they were looking, and how the scene may have appeared when viewed from different perspectives.

Question 4

Constructive Nature of Memory?

Answer 4

The idea that what people report as memories are constructed based on what actually happened plus additional factors, such as expectations, other knowledge, and other life experiences.

Question 5

Cryptomnesia?

Answer 5

A psychological phenomenon where a person believes that a thought, idea, or memory is original or new, but in fact, it was previously encountered or learned and has been forgotten.

Question 6

Cultural Life Script Hypothesis?

Answer 6

The idea that events in a person’s life story become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script for that person’s culture. This has been cited to explain the reminiscence bump.

Question 7

Cultural Life Script?

Answer 7

Life events that commonly occur in a particular culture.

Question 8

Eyewitness Testimony?

Answer 8

Testimony by eyewitnesses to a crime about what they saw during commission of the crime.

• Can be accurate, but normally not.
• Jury members easily believe eyewitness testimonies.

Question 9

Flashbulb Memory?

Answer 9

Memory for the circumstances that surround hearing about shocking, highly charged events. It has been claimed that such memories are particularly vivid and accurate.

Ex. 911, death of Princess Diana, etc.

• Includes both positive & negative events.
• Not always accurate.
• Quite vulnerable to distortion.

Question 10

Fluency?

Answer 10

The ease at which a statement can be remembered.

Question 11

Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory?

Answer 11

Autobiographical memory capacity possessed by some people who can remember personal experiences that occurred on any specific day from their past.

Question 12

Illusionary Truth Effect?

Answer 12

Enhanced probability of evaluating a statement as being true upon repeated presentation.

Question 13

Misinformation Effect?

Answer 13

Misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event that changes how the person describes the event later.

Question 14

Misleading Postevent Information (MPI)?

Answer 14

The misleading information that causes the misinformation effect.

Question 15

Music-enhanced Autobiographical Memories (MEAMS)?

Answer 15

Autobiographical memories eliciteded by hearing music.

Question 16

Narrative Rehearsal Hypothesis?

Answer 16

The idea that we remember some life events better because we rehearse them. This idea was proposed by Neisser as an explanation for ‘flashbulb’ memories.

Question 17

Nostalgia?

Answer 17

A memory that involves a sentimental affection for the past.

Question 18

Post-identified Feedback Effect?

Answer 18

An increase in confidence of memory recall due to confirming feedback after making an identification, as in a police lineup.

Question 19

Pragmatic Inference?

Answer 19

Inference that occurs when reading or hearing a statement leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or necessarily implied by the statement.

Question 20

Reminiscence Bump?

Answer 20

The empirical finding that people over 40 years old have enhanced memory for events from adolescence and early adulthood, compared to other periods of their lives.

Question 21

Repeated Recall?

Answer 21

Recall that is tested immediately after an event and then retested at various times after the event.

Question 22

Repeated Reproduction?

Answer 22

A method of measuring in memory in which a person is asked to reproduce a stimulus on repeated occasions at longer and longer intervals after the original presentation of the material to be remembered.

Question 23

Repressed Childhood Memory?

Answer 23

Memories that have been pushed out of a person’s consciousness.

Question 24

Schema?

Answer 24

A person’s knowledge about what is involved in a particular experience.

• Influence memory recall by filling in gaps with expected details.

Question 25

Script?

Answer 25

A type of schema. It is the conception of the sequence of actions that describe a particular activity.

Ex.) The sequence of events that are associated with going to class would be:
- going to class.

(1) Encode incoming information according to a well-known sequence.
(2) Anticipate certain information is forthcoming.
(3) Identify anomalies in a common sequence of events.

Question 26

Self-image Hypothesis?

Answer 26

The idea that memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identity is being formed. This is one of the explanations for the reminiscence bump.

Question 27

Source Misattribution?

Answer 27

Occurs when the source of a memory is misidentified.

Question 28

Source Monitoring Error?

Answer 28

Misidentifying the source of a memory.

Question 29

Weapons Focus?

Answer 29

The tendency for eyewitnesses to a crime to focus attention of a weapon, which causes poorer memory for other things that were happening.

Question 30

Youth Bias?

Answer 30

Tendency for the most notable public events in a person’s life to be perceived when the person is young.

Question 31

False Memory - Experiment?

Answer 31

How memory for words on a list sometimes occur for words that were not presented.

Question 32

Forgot it All Along - Experiment?

Answer 32

How it is possible to remember something and also have the experience of having previously forgotten it.

Question 33

Memory Judgement - Experiment?

Answer 33

A test of how accurate people are at predicting their memory performance.

Question 34

Discrepancy Detection Principle?

Answer 34

Recollections are more likely to change if a person does not immediately detect discrepancies between post event information and memory for the original event.

Question 35

Three types of well remembered events?

Answer 35

(1) Significant life events
(2) Highly emotional events
(3) Transition points in life

Question 36

Four strategies to improve eyewitness testimony?

Answer 36

(1) Inform witness the perpetrator may not be present in the lineup.
(2) Use fillers in the lineup who resemble the suspect.
(3) Present suspects sequentially, not simultaneously.
(4) Employ cognitive interviewing techniques to enhance recall.

Question 37

False Memories?

Answer 37

Memories of events that never occurred, often created by suggestion or misattribution.

• Visual imagery & social pressures enhance false memory formation.
• External cues influence recall.

Question 38

Suggestibility?

Answer 38

Tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into personal recollections.